Interview with Mxolisi Vusimuzi Beauchamp (Part III)
Location: Pretoria Art Museum, Tshwane, South Africa
Date: Tuesday 17 February 2015 at 09:00
Part Three:
Identity /Ideology Bamboozled
Mmutle. So would you say the idea of identity in terms of the content of the work started to take shape somewhere during this period, as you were exposed to the work of Spike Lee in comparison to the work of John Singleton?
Vusi. There was another artist, an English-Nigerian who used Elephant dung in his artworks. I forget his name. But like in identity, interrogating the idea of identity you know in the arts Spike Lee’s ‘Bamboozled’ sort of put at rest my anger towards the way blacks were excluded. You know that movie it made sense in a way that entertainment and such things were not something that was reserved for black people in a way. Entertainment wise it was mocking them. That was the entertainment industry and I just wanted to find a way for escaping or teaching [myself] or finding a way to express my anger through specifying that there is a difference between an artist and a black artist. They are two different things.
Mmutle. You mean the difference between a white artist…?
Vusi. No-no, the difference between an artist and a black artist. You know if you are black you are not an artist you are a ‘black artist’. So there is that thing…
[Mmutle. So you are not an artist pure – you are a black artist.]
Vusi. That’s what helped me to interrogate this thing. I have always saw myself as an artist…
Mmutle. And now this dichotomy of
Beauchamp, Mxolisi Vusimuzi. New Industry, 2015. Mixed Media.
